Include this strategy in your efforts to help youth in poverty

Since 2005 interns working with Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago have been creating graphics and visualizations to communicate our strategies in new ways, and to new audiences. Below is a presentation created from this pdf, by Byeonghui Kim, an intern from South Korea. Past presentations can be seen here and here. View this page to see how interns learn what the strategies are as they go from first day on the job and through their internship period. Students in high school and college, as well as volunteers in different industries, could be creating similar presentations and using them to mobilize resources to support birth-to-work mentoring strategies in every city in the world. If you'd like to be part of this project, introduce yourself on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

Gang Territories and School Closing - View map

DNAInfo Chicago has created an interactive map showing gang territories around schools that Chicago Public Schools plans to close. Maps like this could be use by business, faith groups, political leaders, etc. to build non-school supports for youth and families in these neighborhoods so kids would a) come to school better prepared to learn; b) and be less likely to turn to gangs as a source of social/emotional and economic support. See the DNA Infor map here.

Responding to Growth of Suburban Poverty

I encourage you to read this Brookings Institute report as well as this article on Mother Jones, showing the dramatic growth of poverty in suburbs of Chicago and other cities. The strategies I've shown for building a distribution of mentor-rich programs in inner city neighborhoods will need to be expanded to reach youth in high poverty neighborhoods. Will you help?

Mapping Strategy Started in 1993

In 1993 I was telling a friend at Chicago's United Way/Crusade of Mercy about my new organization and it's goal of building a master database of non-school tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. She said "How will you show that information?" I said "I don't know.". She showed me a geography magazine and ways that data can be mapped, and I've been trying to harness this potential ever since then. The article at the left is from a 1994 Chicago SunTimes article.

The challenge with creating the types of maps you see on this blog are a) you need to collect the data on existing tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region and keep it up-to-date; b) you need to collect demographic and school performance information from available sources; c) you need to be able to afford a mapping tool; d) and you need to have talent available who can use the mapping tool to create maps. I've never found a foundation and/or business partner who would fund this consistently, even though ESRI donated software and IBM provide money for computers back in 1995.

Yet, as this article in the this 1999 URISA trade association magazine shows, I've been able to create enough maps that stories have been told in various media at different times over the past 20 years. To many people I've become known as the "map man" because of how I constantly talk about ways maps could be used by leaders to guide the distribution of financial resources and support the growth of mentor rich k-12 non-school tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago, or any other major city with pockets of urban poverty.

I've been hosting Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences every six months since May 1994, and in these I've also shared maps via posters and workshops.

In late 2007 I received a $50,000 donation which enabled me to hire a part time map maker, Mike Traken, who created all of the maps shown and map stories on this blog, up till early 2011 when we ran out of money to keep Mike on staff. With part of the money we also hired a tech team from India who build the Interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator which you can use to create your own map view and maps. This PDF provides instructions for using the Program Locator.

If you think this use of maps has value, I encourage you to help me find sponsors, investors, business partners and volunteers to help me update the maps, build new maps, create advertising so more people know how to use them, and create new owners who have the same passion that I have for using maps to build a better distribution of needed services in high poverty areas of the country.

Maps showing most segregated cities in USA

Business Insider has posted maps showing the 21 most segregated cities in the US.

My hope is that leaders will use maps like these and those on this blog and the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to develop strategies that draw volunteers from beyond these neighborhoods into ongoing tutor/mentor programs that help build bridges connecting youth and families to ideas, opportunities and resources beyond these highly segregated areas.

You can also see these maps on Flickr at this link.

Chicago youth program funding - Create Competition to DO GOOD!

A slick new web site has been created to mobilize resources from the business community to fight the rising violence in many inner city neighborhoods. The Mayor is raising a pool of $50 million dollars to fund new initiatives that expand the number of youth reached. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago on the Tutor/Mentor Institute blog.

On the Get IN Chicago web site is a map showing neighborhoods eligible for funding from the first round of this initiative. I created a map from the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, showing levels of poverty, locations of poorly performing public schools (from 2008) and locations of non-school tutor/mentor programs that I've been able to identify.

While the neighborhoods targeted for funding certainly have a need for youth serving programs, there are other neighborhoods that also need these programs, including areas of the suburbs that don't come under the Mayor's umbrella, but certainly are affected by high poverty, gangs, drugs, etc.

If you look at the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator map, you'll see that there are not a lot of existing tutor/mentor programs in the areas where funding is targeted. If you look at the web sites of existing programs, you'll also find that too few show comprehensive strategies, theory of change, or multi-year history of success. That means new and inexperienced programs will compete for this money, and that it will take time for these programs to grow to be great in how they influence youth habits, or how they build a cadre of loyal volunteers. That won't happen in a few months. Hopefully in two to three years when these programs are maturing, the money will still be there.

However, what happens to other programs in areas outside of this funding? Are companies going to just switch funding from programs they have been supporting to new initiatives the Mayor is supporting? Can we really expect them to put $50 million in new funding into this sector? A newly released 2013 Non Profit Finance Fund survey shows that non profits are already struggling financially. Without a flow of operating dollars to sustain current efforts, new money for expanded efforts sits on an empty shell.

The city and suburbs need a long-term strategy that mobilizes operating and innovation resources for many programs and supports volunteer, youth and donor connections for many years. It's needed this for more than 20 years, not just in the past two to three years.

This strategy needs to use maps to support the distribution of resources and growth of programs. It needs to be based on libraries of information showing what programs are doing in different parts of the country, not just Chicago. And it needs to be supported by on-going public involvement advertising, education, evangelism, involving leaders from many sectors. I created this strategy map many years ago to show my own commitment to helping youth from the Cabrini Green neighborhood move through school and into jobs and careers. It shows a need for many leaders and many volunteers with different skills. It could be on the web site of any youth program, or on the web site of the Mayor and any business leader.

To me, that's the role of elected leaders. Use your influence to motivate leaders from every sector to adopt long-term strategies that help all kids in Chicagoland move through school and into 21st century jobs and careers. Use your web site to give recognition to leaders who adopt this strategy and showcase those who seem to do a little better than others every year. Create a Chicagoland competition to DO GOOD and compete with other major cities to show that Chicago leaders can do more good than they can.